This Side of Invisible

On New Year's Eve, I was busy trying to calm my children after dinner and making them promises of movies and popcorn and no bedtimes when the phone rang. "Come home as soon as you can," my aunt said, "your dad is back in the hospital and he's on full life support. The doctors says there is nothing more they can do and they won't keep him on life support forever. A decision has to be made." I knew that phone call was coming. If not that night, the next or sometime in the next month or if we were lucky, maybe sometime next year. Dad had been in and out of the hospital the whole month of December. Four heart attacks in three weeks is simply too much for one body to handle. Especially if that body has endured a life-time of abuse (think: sex, drugs and rock and roll). Dad had been ill for years. It was a miracle he made it this long. My first selfish thought when I hung up the phone was: At least I got to have Christmas with my husband a...